New Dell: interesting box
Sep. 2nd, 2007 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyPretty nice looking case, a combo of silver and white that looks nice to me.
This is as "legacy free" as I've ever gotten.
No parallel or serial ports, no PS/2 mouse or keyboard ports, or PATA.
You get integrated VGA, sound, and a truckload (10) of USB 2.0 ports. 4 front, 4 rear, 2 internal (used for memory card reader or whatever).
Inside, 2 PCI, 1 PCI Express 1x and 1 PCI Express 16x slot. The free fax modem is in a PCI slot. 4 SATA sockets, with 2 taken up (first HD and the optical drive). Network/external storage looks good for this machine.
The lack of PATA sockets will probably mean using the 2nd PCI slot for PATA support.
The 2nd machine that's coming I ordered with firewire; the chat line dude said it was mainboard integrated and the $30 was just buying a cable; however, I looked over this mainboard and didn't see a socket. I'm thinking when it shows up it'll have a firewire card in a slot. Hopefully it's the PCIX 1x slot so the 2 PCIs are free.
I immediately wiped Vista (ptooey) from the machine, and I'm in the process of trying to get XP up and running on it. I have 2000 too but I have a Dell XP OEM disc that should work. Dell doesn't disclose or provide drivers for anything but Vista (apparently they're contractually bound by Microsoft to not help with installing anything but Vista) but a tiny bit of googling turned up the chipset and links to drivers, so hopefully this won't take too long.
This is as "legacy free" as I've ever gotten.
No parallel or serial ports, no PS/2 mouse or keyboard ports, or PATA.
You get integrated VGA, sound, and a truckload (10) of USB 2.0 ports. 4 front, 4 rear, 2 internal (used for memory card reader or whatever).
Inside, 2 PCI, 1 PCI Express 1x and 1 PCI Express 16x slot. The free fax modem is in a PCI slot. 4 SATA sockets, with 2 taken up (first HD and the optical drive). Network/external storage looks good for this machine.
The lack of PATA sockets will probably mean using the 2nd PCI slot for PATA support.
The 2nd machine that's coming I ordered with firewire; the chat line dude said it was mainboard integrated and the $30 was just buying a cable; however, I looked over this mainboard and didn't see a socket. I'm thinking when it shows up it'll have a firewire card in a slot. Hopefully it's the PCIX 1x slot so the 2 PCIs are free.
I immediately wiped Vista (ptooey) from the machine, and I'm in the process of trying to get XP up and running on it. I have 2000 too but I have a Dell XP OEM disc that should work. Dell doesn't disclose or provide drivers for anything but Vista (apparently they're contractually bound by Microsoft to not help with installing anything but Vista) but a tiny bit of googling turned up the chipset and links to drivers, so hopefully this won't take too long.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-02 11:43 am (UTC)I've started a sort-out at home, cheaply selling off some old P4 machines and finding good homes for a couple of dual Xeon servers.
This will leave me with a P3 running 24/7 for web/ftp services and security cameras. For my new main machine, I'm thinking of this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-119-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=
It happens that I have a Core 2 Quad CPU that will fit.
The Mobo comes with 10USB, 2 Firewire, 6 SATA (3G), 2x Gbit ethernet and 2 E-SATA ports. Since the CPU I have is a 1333MHz FSB one, this limits the choice of boards a bit. There may be cheaper well-reviewed choices, of course.
On the Dell front, the NHS has appointed Dell as sole-supplier locally and also has no current plans to migrate to Vista. It may be that I can help if you get stuck on XP or 2K drivers, since I think all models are available to us with XP.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-02 12:46 pm (UTC)One tricky bit is that you get USB 2.0 support by just installing SP2, but the USB controller isn't automatically recognized. You need to go into device manager and use the "update driver" function, then it comes right up.
Also the display settings wouldn't stick (reverted to low-res on reboot) when I changed them with the Windows applet. I had to use the nVidia applet, then it worked OK.